India, April 25 -- Democracy, as a formal system, is indifferent to what produced the vote it counts. This indifference is usually a virtue, for it is what prevents the powerful from assigning themselves additional weight. But there are circumstances in which this same indifference becomes its own form of injustice: when the system's arithmetic rewards precisely the communities that declined to invest in their own people, and penalises precisely those that did. India is approaching one such circumstance, and the approach has acquired both urgency and a specific political shape.

On April 17, 2026, the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill was defeated in the Lok Sabha. Of the 528 members present, 298 voted in favour and 230 against, leaving...